Authors: Sarah Dessen
Rebecca bit her lip, then looked down at the table. My mother said, “Margo is of the mind that the subcontractors should also be in company-chosen attire.”
“You want the pool guys in uniform?” my grandmother said. “We’re lucky to get them to wear shirts.”
“They wear shirts,” I said, a bit too defensively.
“Not usually,” she replied. “And who’s paying for all this?”
“Employees will be asked to purchase their own work ensembles,” Margo told her. She sounded uncommonly flustered, although whether by the water issue or this one was hard to say. “It’s standard business practice.”
“Maybe so, but it’s a bad one,” my grandmother told her. “We’ll be breeding resentment among the people who have the closest contact with the clients during their vacations.”
“Those same clients need to know who they are dealing with when someone shows up at their rental house,” Margo said, rallying a bit.
“Then we order T-shirts with our company logo and make them the uniform. Cheaper and easier.”
“This is a professional environment,” Margo argued. “We can’t be wearing T-shirts.”
“But maybe we wouldn’t have to,” my mom pointed out. “I mean, we’re here at the office. There’s no question who we work for. Margo’s right, there should be no confusion who is at the properties. So we do T-shirts for everyone who is making house calls, and we just continue as we are.”
This, in a nutshell, was how every Friday meeting went. Margo came in swinging with some Big Idea and she and I got into it. Then my grandmother shot her down, and my mom worked out a compromise. You’d think we would have figured out a shortcut, but for whatever reason, we still had to do it like this, every single time.
“So it’s decided,” my grandmother said, downing a bit more of Margo’s water. “Let’s get a quote from that T-shirt place we like. You know the one that we used for those give-aways last year.”
“Threadbare,” my mother said. “Over on Plexton.”
“Right. Margo, you’ll get some logos together for them?”
Margo nodded, but she didn’t look happy, the expression on her face the same one as when we were kids and me and Amber picked on her. Which was pretty often, if I was totally honest. Then, like now, she just made it too easy.
My mom and grandmother had already moved on, discussing some plumbing issue with one of the properties. I leaned over to Margo. “You know,” I said, as she sulkily crossed
something off her agenda, “personally, I’d like having a required T-shirt. Then in the morning I wouldn’t even have to think about what to wear.”
She eyed my tank top. “Are you saying you do that now?”
And there you had it. No good deed—or kind word—goes unpunished. “Forget it,” I said, moving back again.
“Hey, I’m kidding.” She smiled at me, barely, then added, “I’m sorry about you and Luke.”
I nodded. “Me, too.”
“You think it’s really over, or just a fight?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “It’s just really weird.”
She gave me a sympathetic look, then reached over and squeezed my hand. Say what you would about Margo—and I said more than anyone—she was still my sister.
“Margo,” my grandmother said now, “can we go ahead and move through the rest of these items? I’ve got to be at the building department at nine thirty to make nice with that inspector about walkway setbacks.”
“Right.” Margo shuffled her papers, back in charge. “Next item: the new additional linen inventory system. If you’ll flip over your agenda, you’ll see that I’ve incorporated a new process for managing and documenting client towel requests. If we can all look at diagram A, I’ll …”
She kept talking, going on about towels and allotments and overhead. I tried to listen, but my mind kept drifting, back to the events of the night I’d gone out with Theo. What if that text had gone through? Maybe he would have called that girl, but it wouldn’t have gone any further. And what was one stupid phone call, really, in the grand scheme of things?
Well—a lot. I knew that. And trying to break it down this way, to minor and major offenses, maybes and what-ifs, was like arguing over the origin of cracks in a broken egg. It was done. How it happened didn’t matter anymore.
When the meeting was finally over, my grandmother left for the building department, Rebecca returned to reception, and my mom and sister started talking about some home-owner who was unhappy with a bill he’d been sent. Well aware that at any moment they’d be descending on me for more details about Luke, I took advantage of this diversion and left for the storeroom, biscuit box in hand.
My first job of the day was to run items to whatever properties had requested them since end of business the day before. I grabbed the list from where we kept it, on a clipboard on the door, and got busy getting what I needed.
As always, lots of people wanted more towels. Someone needed a bathmat. A smoke detector was beeping for new batteries at one house, multiple light bulbs had blown out apparently simultaneously at another. In other words, nothing very surprising until I got to the end of the list, where I saw this:
Functioning, high-end brand-name toaster oven with temperature-adjust feature and varied toast doneness options. Only new from box acceptable. ASAP!
Even before I ran my finger across the page to the column listing what houses requested what, I knew what I would find opposite this item. Sure enough: Sand Dollars.
Sighing, I propped open the back door, stuck my bag and biscuit in my car, then doubled back for the towels and everything else. Then I went to my mom’s office for further instructions. I found her on the phone, sipping at her fountain drink.
“No, she wouldn’t tell me,” she was saying. She listened for a moment. “Of course I did. But—”
“Mom.”
She clapped a hand over the receiver, a guilty look on her face. “Oh, Emaline, hi. Yes?”
“That’s Amber,” I said, nodding at the phone. “Right?”
“You know what, it
is
,” she said, like this was such a crazy coincidence. “We were just touching base about, um …”
I held up the list, mostly to spare us both whatever excuse she was scrambling to come up with. “What’s the story with the toaster oven on here?”
“Sand Dollars?” she asked. I nodded. “I have a call in to the owner. If it needs to be replaced—”
“It’s brand-new,” I said. “I unpacked it myself.”
She shrugged. “Could be a lemon. It happens. On vacation, people need their toast.”
“I’ve dealt with this client plenty,” I told her. “I’d bet you big money it’s just not up to her standards.”
“Well, she is paying ten grand a month,” she pointed out.
“Then she can afford her own high-end, temperature-adjusted, varied-doneness toaster oven. We shouldn’t have to cater to her every freaking whim.”
Through the speaker of the phone, I heard Amber say, “S
omeone’s
in a bad mood.”
“I’ll send maintenance over to check the current machine,”
my mom said, sliding her hand to cover the receiver. “Okay? And then we’ll go from there.”
“I’ll do it,” I said, turning on my heel. “It’s just stupid, is all I’m saying.”
“You know,” my mom called out, as I walked away, “maybe you’d be happier doing reception today? I can send Rebecca to—”
I waved her off, shaking my head. Dealing with Ivy and her appliance standards was in no way ideal. But being stuck at a desk, a sitting target for everyone’s curiosity, would be much worse.
I got into my car and cranked the engine, then pulled out onto the main road, headed towards the Tip. I’d gone about a block when I saw a familiar figure loping in a very familiar way down the shoulder ahead. I pulled up slowly, waiting until I was right behind Morris before leaning on my horn, hard. Anyone else would have leapt right from their skin, but true to form, he didn’t even jump.
“Hey,” he said when he turned and saw me, all casual, like it was common for people to try to scare him to death during rush hour on a weekday. “What’s up?”
“You want a ride?”
He considered this, like he actually preferred walking, before saying, “Sure.”
I unlocked the passenger-side door, he slid in, and I eased back into traffic, neither of us saying anything for a moment. Finally, as we came up to a stoplight, he noticed the take-out box, sitting in the center of the dash. “That yours?”
“Luke’s,” I told him. “A biscuit from Last Chance.”
“Huh.”
Another silence. Traffic was really moving slowly. I said, “We broke up this morning.”
I felt him look at me. This seemed to warrant actual surprise. “For real?”
“Think so. There’s some other girl, apparently.”
He directed his gaze forward again. “From here?”
I shook my head, then swallowed. “Nope.”
We drove on a little farther, then had to merge left around some construction cones. As we did, the biscuit box slid a bit down the dash, the Styrofoam making a squeaking sound. Morris and I both watched it until it hit a vent, which stopped it.
“I’m so stupid,” I said, embarrassed suddenly by the catch I heard in my throat. “I don’t know why I’m still carrying that around. He didn’t even want it. I need to just throw it away.”
Morris considered this as we pulled up to a yellow light that was turning red. Then he reached forward and grabbed the box, unwrapped the biscuit, and stuffed the entire thing in his mouth, dispatching it with about three chomps. After swallowing, he crumpled the paper back into the box, threw it onto the floor at his feet, and said, “Asshole.”
For some crazy reason, it was this—not the breakup itself, not the shock afterwards, not even Margo’s kind words—that finally made me cry. The tears just came, blurring all the brake lights ahead. “Morris,” I said.
“Cheating, no-shirt-wearing loser,” he added, looking out the window. “He’s a punk.”
“He went out and met her at Tallyho,” I managed, my voice breaking.
He made a disgusted noise. “Punk,” he said again.
Now I was really crying, which would have been embarrassing had it been just about anyone else. But this was Morris, who had seen me bawl plenty, the first time being when we were eight and I fell out of the tree that bridged our two yards, breaking my wrist. He was the one who had sat with me in the back of my mom’s car as she sped to the hospital in Cape Frost, his face stoic as I sobbed from the pain. Morris was not the type to offer a hug or even hold your hand. But there was something in his quiet indignation at the universe then—and Luke, now—that was just the kind of comfort I needed.
I was still blubbering, but trying to stop, as I saw the bridge up ahead. “I’m such a mess,” I said. “We’re almost off the island and I didn’t even ask you where you were going.”
He shrugged. “No place. Wherever you are.”
I felt that lump in my throat again, swelling, and turned back to traffic to try to regain my composure. Meanwhile, Morris settled into his seat with his signature slouch, neither knowing nor caring where I was taking him. Like destinations, in general, were vastly overrated. And maybe they were. As long as you were moving, you were always going somewhere.
“Well,” Theo said, “I suppose that would depend on your specific definition of ‘not working.’”
I looked at him, then back at the toaster oven sitting on the kitchen island between us. “You’re saying there’s more than one?”
“Definition?” he said, clarifying. I nodded. “Well, sure. On the one hand, it could mean, you know, that it’s broken.”
“Right,” I said.
“But taken in a wider sense,” he continued, “it could translate to the lack of a specific skill, i.e., an inability or outright refusal to perform required tasks.”
“It’s a toaster oven,” I said. “Not the proletariat.”
He laughed. “Wow. Impressive vocab you have there.”
“What, just because I’m from here I can’t use big words?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Um, no. That’s just kind of an SAT word choice, not one you throw around in breakfast conversation.”
Okay, so maybe I was a little bit on edge. “Sorry,” I said. “Rough morning.”
“It’s okay.” He rubbed a hand over his face, glancing at the stairs that led to the upper floors where, I assumed, Ivy was still sleeping. On his wrist was one of the bracelets he’d bought from Gert’s, the slim, green one with the scallop shell. “Look, I know you think this whole toaster thing is ridiculous—”
“Because it is.”
“But the bottom line is that Ivy likes things done in a certain way. If her breakfast, or anything else, isn’t right, then it’s my job to correct the problem.”
“How can toast not be right?”
“As I’ve explained,” he said, giving me a tired look, “there is no specific control for doneness on this thing. Your only choices are light, medium, and dark.”
“You want more variation,” I said. Then, before he could reply, I added, “I think that’s the word that got me into college.”
He smiled. “What I want is an adjustable dial. Light is too light, medium is too medium, and dark is too dark. Right now, we have black and white only, and we need gray.”
“Gray toast?”
“Fine,” he said, shaking his head. “Go ahead, mock. But I think you actually
do
know what I mean.”
Hearing this, I had a flash of Luke earlier, saying the same thing, but about what our relationship was lacking. Apparently, it was obvious to everyone else what I did or did not know. Too bad I still felt so clueless.
“So what I’m hearing,” I said, pushing this out of my head, “is that this machine is not broken, but still needs to be replaced.”
“Pretty much.” He sighed. Then, more confidently: “Yes.”
As I looked back at the toaster oven, I could feel him studying me, the same way he’d been doing since I’d first turned up at his door fifteen minutes earlier. After I dropped Morris off at a nearby gas station—“Talk later,” he’d told me, as always—I’d done my best to regain my composure, putting on lipstick and taking deep breaths. Unfortunately, I was cursed with the blotch-prone kind of skin that always made it obvious if I’d been crying. Theo hadn’t asked me anything about this directly, though. Never had I been so happy to talk about breakfast foods.